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GOURMET NEWS www.gourmetnews.com

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VOLUME 91 • NUMBER 2 MARCH 2026 • $7.00 • Saffron Road’s Adnan Durrani Turns Company’s Helm Over to New CEO Paul Turbeville PAGE 3

• Kroger: Customers Looking to Elevate Foods PAGE 6

• Humble Pistachio Moves Outside Snack Aisle PAGE 8

• Albertsons Media Collective Studies In-Store Campaigns, Plans Expansion PAGE 12

• UNFI Celebrates 50 Years of Partnership, Purpose PAGE 13

• Polypropylene Beverage to Go Cups Earn Widely Recyclable Designation PAGE 14

B U S I N E S S

N E W S P A P E R

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• Featured Products PAGE 19

• Advertiser Index PAGE 22

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G O U R M E T

I N D U S T R Y

SFA’s Inaugural Winter FancyFaire Kicks Off New Era in San Diego BY A.J. FLICK

Attendees arrived at the inaugural Winter FancyFaire in January eager to see how the Specialty Food Association “reimagined” its winter trade show – but also wary of colder-than-normal weather in the host city of San Diego. Fortunately, the show and weather delivered sunny inspirations for the coming year. More than 11,000 specialty food and beverage exhibitors set up camp

Roughly 66 million Americans live in rural areas – defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as being outside an area with 2,500 or more people – which amounts to about one-fifth of the total U.S. population. Maine and Vermont top the list of

U.S. Private Label Industry Reaches $282.8B in Sales

in the spacious San Diego Convention Center, with more than 300 being first-time exhibitors. The First Night Celebration on the grounds of Petco Park featured the unveiling of the first Trend of the Year – SenseMaxxing – and key trends for 2026. The evening also featured FancyFaire swag, lots of great

food & beverages and was capped off with fireworks. SenseMaxxing, according to the SFA is “an embrace of experiential intensity, where every bite and sip cranks up the volume on sensory saturation. In the current cultural moment, when technology and AI are encroaching on our personal and professional lives, it’s a reminder of our uniquely human senses – that they are precious, powerful and worth leaning into. SenseMaxxing says goodbye, boring beige, and hello, full-on feeling.”

most rural Americans, about 61 percent, with – not surprisingly – California ranking as one of the lowest, about 5 percent. But who are these rural Americans, many of whom are responsible for raising the crops and livestock that everyone depends upon? Land O’Lakes approached the storied Imagine Entertainment pro-

duction company – founded by producer Brian Grazer and actor/director/producer Ron Howard – to change the way rural America is depicted. The result is the Modern Rural Collective – a network of storytellers, marketers and brands with a mission to inspire a shared narrative for all Americans – one rooted in mutual aspiration and authentic representation. “Authentic representation matters,” said Heather Malenshek,

U.S. sales of store brands increased slightly more than $9 billion to a record $282.8 billion in all outlets last year compared to 2024, according to PLMA’s Circana Unify+ data. Store brand dollar sales increased nearly three times the rate of national brands, climbing 3.3 percent, compared to a gain of only 1.2 percent for their national brand counterparts for the 52 weeks ending Dec. 28. “Store brands are outperforming national brands across the U.S., growing faster, expanding share, and delivering record-setting sales results,” said PLMA President Peggy Davies. Store brand unit volume was up by 434.3 million to 68.7 billion, also setting a new record. This represents a 0.6 percent rise, while national brands declined by -0.6 percent. In store brand unit sales gains, the best performing department for 2025 was pet care, up 5.4 percent, followed by liquor +4.4 percent; beverages, +2.3 percent; frozen, +0.9 percent; refrigerated, + 0.7 percent and general food, +0.2 percent. In dollar sales, seven departments finished ahead of the prior

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Collective Aims to Inspire Rural America Narrative BY A.J. FLICK

• Swiftly Launches AI-Powered SmartCircularPlatform for Grocers’ Weekly Circulars

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Scientists Working to Stop Locust Damage Worldwide BY MIKALA KASS

Special to Gourmet News “They’re very destructive when there's a lot of them, but one on one, what's not to love?” Arianne Cease says. She’s talking about locusts. As the director of Arizona State University’s Global Locust Initiative, Cease has a healthy admiration for these insects, even as she studies ways to manage locust swarms and prevent the destruction they cause. Locust swarms, which may

conjure images of biblical plagues and ancient famines, remain a serious problem worldwide. They can destroy crops across entire regions, ruin people’s livelihoods and, in some places, impact children’s education and future economic opportunities. Swarms can cover hundreds of square miles – equal to a major metropolitan area like New York City or Phoenix. So when Cease and her international team of scientists found a simple soil-based method to keep locusts from eating crops,

they knew their work could change people’s lives. To the team’s knowledge, theirs is the first study to test this new method in real-world farming conditions and confirm that it works. The study was published in Springer Nature. Associate Professor Mamour Touré of Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, was the lead author of the study, while Cease served as the principal investigator of this project, supported through the U.S. Agency for International De-

velopment. “The results are of major importance to the scientific community and also to Senegalese farmers,” Touré says. “The study gave them a better understanding of grasshoppers and locusts, as well as a practical way to control them at the local level.” Everything you don’t want to know about locusts “All locusts are grasshoppers, but not all grasshoppers are locusts,” says Cease, an associate Continued on PAGE 16